Welcome to the NHSScotland Community Dispensing section of Information Services Division (ISD) website.

The Prescribing Team within ISD maintains a detailed database of all NHS prescriptions dispensed in the community in Scotland. The information is supplied by Practitioner and Counter Fraud Services (P&CFS) and is sourced through an established centrally managed national payment system.

These data are augmented with information on prescriptions written in Scotland that were dispensed elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Between 2007 and April 2014, these data are incomplete due to changes in English processing of prescriptions.

GPs write the vast majority of these prescriptions, with the remainder written by other authorised prescribers such as nurses and dentists. Also included are prescriptions written in hospitals that are dispensed in the community. Medicines dispensed within hospitals are not included in this dataset. For more information about medicines dispensed in hospitals, please see the Hospital Medicines Utilisation Database (HMUD).

Data on Community pharmacy dispensing and services are used for a wide variety of purposes which include: health services research, performance management and providing information to support health promotion. They also support various NHSScotland initiatives such as information support for clinical governance, national audits and medicines management.

Use the left-hand navigation links to access further information on prescribing, dispensing and pharmacy services.

ISD is a division of NHS NSS
Working at the very heart of the health service, NSS delivers services critical to frontline patient care and in support of the efficient and effective operation of NHS Scotland. Visit the NSS Website for more information